BANGOR,
Maine - The Augusta-based Disability Rights Center of Maine on Thursday
filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on behalf of an 83-year-old woman
challenging the constitutionality of a new law that allows patients
committed involuntarily to psychiatric facilities to be medicated
against their will.

The lawsuit
claims that the new law violates the due process rights of the woman —
identified only as Jane Doe — that are guaranteed in the 14th Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution. The 17-page complaint claims that the law does
not give the patient proper notice of a hearing or an opportunity to be
heard at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner before being
deprived of her "liberty interest."

The lawsuit
also claims that under the new law people may be forced to take
medications that can even cause death or have devastating and
irreversible side effects, especially in elderly patients.

Attorneys
are seeking to have the law set aside and to recoup legal fees and
expenses.

The
Disability Rights Center is a not-for-profit legal aid clinic that
specializes in disability cases.

"Ms. Doe has
a constitutionally protected fundamental liberty and-or a substantial
liberty interest to refuse medical treatment that included the forcible
administration of powerful psychotropic medication," the lawsuit argues.
"This liberty interest includes refusing such medical treatment
regardless of how unwise her sense of values may seem to her treating
psychiatrists."

Efforts to
reach the attorneys who filed the case were unsuccessful late Thursday
afternoon.

The named
defendants are Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe; Brenda Harvey,
commissioner of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services; and
David Proffitt, superintendent of Riverview Psychiatric Center, formerly
Augusta Mental Health Institute.

An Act
Regarding Clinical Review of Certain Requests for Involuntary Mental
Health Treatment was passed by the Legislature and signed by the
governor in April. It allows for a committee, according to the
complaint, that includes at least two licensed professionals and two or
more licensed professional staff who do not provide direct care to the
patient, to issue a finding that a patient should be medicated against
his or her will. At least one member of the panel must be licensed to
prescribe medication.

The
plaintiff in the case was involuntarily committed to Riverview on May
28, about a month after the new law went into effect. Doe was committed
by order of the 7th District Court in Augusta for a period not to exceed
16 weeks, according to the lawsuit.

Doe was
notified in writing on June 5 that the Clinical Review Panel was going
to meet on June 10, but she was not told what course of treatment would
be considered, according to the complaint. A peer support worker who was
also a Riverview employee attended the meeting with Doe but allegedly
told the panel that because she was not an attorney or a clinician she
did not feel qualified to ask questions on Doe’s behalf.

One panel
member, according to the lawsuit, referred to a possible risk of death
due to her advanced age from the recommended anti-psychotic drug. The
Federal Drug Administration requires a warning on the box of the
medication stating that elderly patients with dementia have a higher
risk of death than those who do not take these types of drugs.

Doe’s
doctors had not ruled out dementia as the cause of her involuntary
commitment, the lawsuit states. She was ordered to take an
anti-psychotic medication on June 10, but the order was rescinded a week
later. The lawsuit does not state whether or not Doe ever was
administered the drug. It also does not explain any side effects she
might have suffered.

Although the
law says that patients have a right to be informed of, appear at, and
comment at a meeting of the panel, the complaint claims that the law is
unconstitutional because it:

Provides
patients a lay adviser rather than an attorney but does not outline
any qualifications for such advisers.

ä Does
not require the panel’s proceedings to be recorded.

ä Does
not outline any evidentiary standard by which the panel must make
its decisions.

ä Does
not allow for a timely judicial review of forced treatment orders.

The state
has 30 days to respond to the lawsuit after it receives the complaint.